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At the touch of the curb the other flamed into still, white wrath. "If you're going to be a whore," he said deliberately, "play the whore's game. I'm one and I know it. Banneker's one, but hasn't the courage to face it. You're one, Edmonds no, you're not; not even that. You're the hallboy that f-fetches the drinks " Marrineal had risen. Severance turned upon him.
The openness of their intimacy went far to rob calumny of its sting. And Banneker's ingrained circumspection of the man trained in the open, applied to les convenances, was a protection in itself.
If he could have come to grips with his employer, he would at least have known now where to take his stand. But Marrineal was elusive. No, not even elusive; quiescent. He waited. As time passed, Banneker's editorial and personal involvements grew more complex. At what moment might a pressure from above close down on his pen, and with what demand?
Banneker nodded, half checking himself in his slow walk. "How are you?" he said with an accent of surprise and pleasure. Cressey's expressionless face turned a little. There was no response in kind to Banneker's smile. "Oh! H'ware you!" said he vaguely, and passed on. Banneker advanced mechanically until he reached the corner. There he stopped. His color had heightened.
See?" "All right. What's your aim?" "Not their brains. I leave that to Mr. Banneker's editorials. I'm after the laugh that starts down here." He laid hand upon his rotund waistcoat. "The belly-laugh." "The anatomy of anti-melancholy," murmured Severance. "Valuable." "You're right, it's valuable," declared its proponent. "It's money; that's what it is. Watch 'em at the movies.
"I guess they can spare me for five minutes," agreed Cressey, glancing back at his forsaken place. "This isn't what you call work, though, is it?" "Hardly. This is my day off." "Oh! And how goes the job?" "Well enough." "I'd think so," commented the other, taking in the general effect of Banneker's easy habituation to the standards of the restaurant. "You don't own this place, do you?" he added.
Something of Banneker's astonishment at this cavalier procedure must have been reflected in his face, for Marrineal, opposite, turned to him with a look of amusement. "What's your view of that, Mr. Banneker?" "Mine?" said Banneker promptly. "I think it's crooked. What's yours?" "Still quick on the trigger," murmured the other, but did not answer the return query.
Banneker nodded comradely and the post chugged away. Inside the shack Io had set out the luncheon-things. To Banneker's eyes she appeared quite unruffled, despite the encounter which he had surmised from Jimmy's sketch. "Get me some flowers for the table, Ban," she directed. "I want it to look festive." "Why, in particular?" "Because I'm afraid we won't have many more luncheons together."
He pretended that it was a needed holiday for him: his bills hardly defrayed the traveling expense. Now, riding back with Banneker, he meditated a final opinion, and out of that opinion came speech. "Mr. Banneker, they ought to give you and me a special niche in the Hall of Fame," he said. A rather wan smile touched briefly Banneker's lips.
I told her it happened to be a woman that the story was quite absurd." Something in the nature of a cold trickle seemed to be flowing between Banneker's brain and his tongue. He said with effort, "Will you be good enough to answer my question?" "Certainly. Mr. Banneker, that was an ill-advised editorial. Or, rather, an ill-timed one. I didn't wish it published until we had time to talk it over."
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